Tomichan Matheikal's blog

A country is really free only when its citizens are free.  Freedom is not merely deliverance from foreign occupation.  Freedom is deliverance from poverty, injustice and other social evils as well as personal evils such as greed and jealousy which give birth to corruption of all sorts.  India is yet to be free.    There are millions of people in India who go to bed hungry even after seven decades of independence.  There are millions who don’t have access to basic healthcare.  Our public distributions systems and primary healthcare systems are abject failures.  The country is still enslaved by poverty.  Can we call it a free country? A man who has to carry the dead body of his wife on his shoulders for kilometres because he cannot afford to hire a vehicle should shake us out of our smugness.  He is a poignant symbol of the callousness that marks a governance which gives more importance to cows, idols and myths. India needs deliverance from its holy cows and myths.  It i

Source Buridan’s Ass, named after 14 th century French philosopher Jean Buridan, is both hungry and thirsty.  It is placed midway between a stack of hay and a pail of water.  If the ass decides to exercise its free will, it will starve to death.  When it turns to the haystack, it can exercise its freedom to choose water first instead.  And when it turns to the water, its free will can interfere again.  Thus it can go on exercising its freedom of choice until it dies of starvation amid food and water. The current theme of Indispire, Love vs Freedom - what would you choose? ( If you land in a situation where you can get true love but not freedom of expression)   #freedom , reminded me of Buridan’s Ass.  Let’s take the example of Kashmir.  Indian patriots are supposedly in love with that piece of land.  Their love denies freedom to the people of the land to choose their own destiny.  Hence the civil war kind of situation in the state.  The question is whether the Indi

Parable Manav was arrested and thrown into a dark dungeon.  No one told him what his crime was.  When they hurled him into the dark cell whose door shut with a bang, all that he could see was a beam of light passing through a slit-like ventilator at the top of one of the walls.  Silence and darkness enveloped him. He stretched his body and touched the narrow sill of the ventilator.  He pulled himself up and looked out through the ventilator.  The light outside helped dispel some of his gloom.  He spent most of his time and energy doing the same thing day after day, without once caring to explore the darkness in the cell.  If only he had explored the darkness, he would have discovered that the door was not locked. What stood between him and his freedom was his obstinate clinging to the narrow slit. Acknowledgement : This parable is adapted from Sheldon B. Kopp’s book, If You Meet the Buddha on the Road, Kill Him!

Fiction – Parable The monk was on his usual visit to the prison.   It was a part of his daily routine to spend an hour in the prison with the intention of making the prisoners understand that what really makes a prison are not the iron bars and concrete walls but the inmate’s attitudes.   It’s not the place you are in or the work you do that makes you happy or unhappy, he would say frequently.   It’s how you view the place and the work that makes the difference. Happiness lies in the mind, not anywhere outside.   That was his basic premise.   “What’s your daily routine?” asked one of the prisoners whom the monk was counselling individually.   The prisoner was a notorious murderer.   “We get up at 4 in the morning,” began the monk.   The prisoner was stunned.   He used to think that getting up at 6.30 as they used to do in the prison was a grave penance.   He wanted to sleep till 10 o’clock.   The monk went on to narrate his daily routine.   Four hours of meditati

Sanjay had nothing new to report And Dritarashtra was becoming impatient Listening to the same old stories Repeated ad infinitum, ad nauseam. OK, not that there are no differences. Draupatis are not just undressed now, They are raped and even killed. Even the soldiers do it in the land of suspected terrorists - In what was the paradise on the earth. Terrorists lay siege to progress of all sorts, Their God alone knows what they want. We know that they have concealed the face of every Draupati Behind the veil of ignorance and obscurity. Even the Durga Shakti genuflects before a sand mafia. Mafias are guarded by the kings and their minions. Kings build palaces of twenty-seven storeys. Indraprastha is a jungle of concrete and avarice. The Babas of Indraprastha speak words of gold, Each lecture brings them millions of dollars; Their queens suck their lust in the night And go conquering lands in the daytime. Karma-yogis have become kaama-yogis. The warrior is in r

I am not free to jump from the balcony of my residence.   If I jump, I may break one of my limbs. Because I stay on the first floor.   Freedom does not mean permission to do whatever I like.   “We are free only where we know,” said Will Durant [ The Story of Philosophy ].   Knowledge gives freedom.   Knowledge is freedom. Most of us make the mistake of thinking that doing what we like to do is freedom.   What we like is determined by our knowledge or awareness or consciousness level.   The rapist in Delhi whose number keeps rising by the day (in spite of the equally rising number of religious leaders) thinks he is free to rape a child. His knowledge or consciousness level is too low to understand why his act is based on an incomplete understanding of himself.   Passion is good and necessary for any human being.   Anyone without passion will be as good as a rock in the denuded Himalayas. Freedom is not freedom passions.   Freedom is freedom from uncoordinated or

The other side is always greener.